Green schools: what is your school doing to help the environment?

Wherever you are in the world, whether it’s Tamworth or Timbuktu, we want to know about green projects happening at your school and how you are teaching sustainability in class.

Share your photos, stories or videos (up to two minutes long) of your green school and tell us what your students are doing to help the environment. We’ll then do a round-up of some of the be contributions on the Teacher Network site.

We have a project named PLASTICOFF, we collect plastic rubbish in our school and in several charts we write how much we collect per mounth. We have a blog to tell everybody that people must reduce plastic use because oceans are full of plastic pollution. We can show the importance of recycling too . You can visit our blog and see our actions, www.plasticoff.blogspot.com

Peterborough is a very environmentally focused city and is striving towards becoming the Environment Capital. Froglife’s Green Pathways project works with lots of schools in Peterborough to help improve the environment for local people and wildlife for example:

Heltwate School have turned a part of their allotment area into an amphibian paradise with a pond ,hibernation area and bog garden feeding station.

Marshfields School have helped our knowledge of reptile populations on a nationally important nature reserve by setting up and carrying out surveys.

Nene Park Academy helped the local Great Crested Newt population by digging an alternative fish-free breeding pond

Peterborough Regional College helped manage a nature reserve for the rare Great Crested Newts by scrub clearing around the edges of ponds to keep them sunny and warm ready for Spring

Voyager Academy and Thomas Deacon Academy helped maintain a community garden in a deprived area of Peterborough

Ken Stimpson Community School improved local green spaces and made them better for people to access by creating wildlife-themed murals.

We have a City and Guilds course in Horticulture for Key Stage 4 students. We dug up an area of the grounds and built a series of raised beds which the students look after, growing food that we sell to the school canteen and the annual Summer Fair

Assemblies In all three partnership schools about the Soay breed and how to behave around them. Sheep are soon to move in to mow the orchard and be part of cross curricular/ cross phase project work. DofE students learn sheep keeping skills.

The Perth Academy Outdoor Learning Resource project started in 2012 with help from The National Lottery ‘Awards for All’, school fundraising and donations from various local businesses .

It continues to thrive due to the hard work and support of pupils, teachers & parents. The project area is still expanding, and currently involves growing vegetables & herbs for sale to staff and for use by the Home Economics department. Planting to attract wildlife and increase biodiversity and providing a meeting/eating area for pupils to enjoy.

The project is used as a teaching resource by many of the subjects taught in the school, from the HE department, Science & Maths. In 2014 the Art Department have been involved in the planning and planting of a willow wall. The area is also easily accessible for the disabled and is open all year round for the general public the local Brownie group uses the garden to grow vegetables as does one of our feeder primary schools.

The Middle School students of the vllage Kohka have begun their organic gardening project. The village that lies on the fringe of the Pench Tiger Reserve is home to a group of motivated youth that are a part of our Education-Base (E-Base) Project (www.ebase.conservationwildlands.org). The E-Base comprises of a three year program that encompasses workshops, school and village projects and a reading program.

With an extremely unpredictable and weak monsoon this year, we waited until late July to sow our seeds this year. The climate has been harsh on this region, like many others in the country and we hope that not only our garden but also the fields of the farmers around the school too manage to get a harvest successfully.

Here in the primary section of Cambridge School in Lima Peru, one of our secondary students came to give a talk about how Sun Flowers are able to extract the heavy metals such as lead and gold from soil. Basically the work could be described as more symbolic, but the kids loved it!

we are lucky to have made a partnership with the local Homelea Allotment Association. This year they gifted us 3 large raised beds and we are growing courgettes, peas, strawberries, mint, salad and more! It has brought a great sense of community to everyone who visits.

Our school combines student, faculty and administration efforts across the entire school to become a more sustainable environment. A large driving force in sustainability at ISM is initiated by the Environmental Council (ECO).

ECO is a member 16 member club of 5 core students, each head of their own environmental area.

One area within the council is media and advertising. This is to get more students interested and engaged in the councils efforts. This branch also updates blogs and emails relevant world events as well as future ECO events.

As a whole the council collaborate and meet weekly in discussions with not only the students, but members of the school administration on future events to help improve the school. Solar panels have been installed on the roof of the school. The elementary department has an "eco" garden and reduced their paper usage by moving towards Ipad's as a learning supplement. Waste segregation bins are present throughout the school. Movie nights are also present, where students can stay afterschool to watch a movie with a strong environmental message such as "The Lorax". Investment into the electrical and cooling infrastructure of the school as improved the school airconditioning units, increasing energy efficiency by 20%. In addition the temperature of the cooling system was increased by 2 percent last year, saving around $25,000 dollars.

More creative events like recycled art drives, poetry slams, cafeteria recycling competitions are also in place for this upcoming year. The council also records the schools carbon footprint and takes steps to reduce the electricity,oil and other resource consumption in order to make steps to reduce them. The newly introduced "bring your own device" rule has significantly reduced paper consumption in the school. The bus system is implementing a free wifi service to encourage more students to use the bus's and thus reducing the car ownership of the school.

In response to the disaster of galloping "brutal" neoliberalism,leadership for creating a more equitable/sustainable future will need to be(and is being) provided by local community/grassroots initiatives/movements.

The local community domain will become the extended "classroom"(with its participants as "teachers") where the next generation can be prepared to embrace, and guide, an unknown/uncertain future.

The following provides a glimpse of this:

"The Restaurateur as a Sustainability Pedagogue: the case of Stuart Gifford and Sarah's Sister's Sustainable Cafe" by Dr Freya Higgins-Desbiolles.

Emily Moskwa,Stuart Gifford.Published in;

Annals of Leisure Research,Vol 17/2,2014.(Routledge).

Starting with a Passive Eco makeover of an 1860s heritage shop,Gifford

and Staff have created a "working model" of lifecycle (cradle to grave)

holistic (now profitable) sustainability.

It competes, and holds it's own,with other cafes,near and far.

It exemplifies the High Street-centric "alternative" community,of which it is a part.

"Alternative" classrooms,and teaching methods/environments will help to encourage the urgent rethink/reform,essential for the challenging future!

We have a garden club where students grow herbs, vegetables and fruit next to our sports field, promoting organic food and eating local, and getting city children out playing in the dirt. It's the fun hands on part of the wider environmental activities at the school.